Today's News

Tricia Braid

You’re getting ready to harvest this year’s corn crop. Or maybe you’ve already started. Either way, you’re looking at unfavorable market conditions being complicated by policy and regulatory decisions in Washington, DC. You’ve participated in IL Corn’s efforts calling on former EPA Administration Scott Pruitt, and now acting EPA Administrator Wheeler to discontinue the process of granting hardship waivers to oil companies, thereby excusing them from the obligation to blend corn ethanol into gasoline. The demand destruction is astounding. Our state produces 1.77 billion gallons of clean, renewable ethanol each year, but EPA waivers destroyed 1.37 billion gallons of demand. EPA has killed the domestic market in a volume nearly equivalent to the annual production in Illinois. Mr. Trump, there are ways you can improve farm economics at no cost to the federal budget, and this RINs waiver issue, along with reallocation of the waived gallons, is a pathway to improved corn grind.

A recent analysis by economists at the University of Missouri’s Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) shows that the U.S. ethanol industry could lose 4.6 billion gallons of domestic demand and nearly $20 billion in sales revenue over the next six years if EPA continues its current practice of exempting dozens of small refiners from their blending obligations under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

FAPRI recently published an update to its March 2018 U.S. Baseline Outlook for Agricultural and Biofuel Markets. The update adopts a new assumption that future “…implementation of the Renewable Fuel Standard follows recent practices, including small refinery waivers.”

The result of integrating this new assumption into the outlook underscores the impact of the small refiner exemptions on the ethanol industry. Comparing the March 2018 outlook to the updated outlook reveals the following effects of the small refiner waivers through 2023:

The de facto RFS requirement for conventional biofuel like corn ethanol falls from the statutory level of 15 billion gallons annually to just 13.7 billion gallons.

U.S. ethanol consumption drops by an average of 761 million gallons per year between 2018 and 2023, or a total of 4.6 billion gallons over the six-year period. That is equivalent to 1.64 billion bushels of corn demand, or nearly 300 million bushels per year.

The average ethanol inclusion rate in gasoline falls under 10.0% in 2019 and steadily slides to 9.5% by 2023. By comparison, the March 2018 outlook projected the national average blend rate above 10.0% every year, rising steadily to 10.4% by 2023.

Wholesale ethanol prices plunge by an average of 19 cents per gallon, or 11%, between 2018 and 2023. Ethanol prices are hit especially hard in the longer term, with the updated outlook lowering 2023 ethanol prices by 27 cents per gallon, or 15%, compared to the March 2018 outlook.

The combination of reduced U.S. ethanol production and lower ethanol prices reduces the industry’s gross ethanol sales revenues by an average of $3.3 billion per year, or $19.7 billion over the 2018-2023 period. That’s 12% below the March 2018 projection.

Conventional ethanol RIN prices plummet, averaging just 10 cents between 2018 and 2023. That’s 85% lower than the 64-cent average in the March 2018 outlook.

YOU’RE A GO FOR FALL N

Given the most recent soil temperatures from the Illinois State Water Survey and the outlook for ongoing colder weather.